LISTENING TO THE ROAD

WHEN WE TRUCK, we talk. I’ve got a lot of stuff about life, love, lunacy, etc., on my agenda to tell Sam, so in the truck I go on and on until I can sense that he’s had enough of his father’s wit and wisdom and he shuts down. Only so much a kid wants to hear from his dad at any given time—then they tune out.

Truckin' with Sam
By Lee and Sam Gutkind
SUNY Press 

We also listen to books on tape. The first two years truckin’ we immersed ourselves primarily in Harry Potter, books five and six, The Order of the Phoenix and The Half Blood Prince. We devoted three hours most every day, more or less, listening to—almost literally living inside of—Harry’s Hogwarts world, with Albus Dumbledore, the wise headmaster, Severus Snape, a reformed Death Eater, and the mysterious and evil He Who Must Not Be Named, while simultaneously watching the country go by, the houses, the billboards, the trucks and trailers, and the parade of humanity—old, young, whiskered, wasted. A couple of years later, in another truckin’ trip, Sam and I would discover that there’s actually a real life He Who Must Not Be Named in another part of the world—the Dalai Lama—in Han-occupied Tibet.

But rock and roll remains the highlight of the ride and the way to begin and end the day. Every day, we start with the Grateful Dead and “Truckin’.” No deviation, no way, because we wouldn’t be having these adventures without the partial inspiration from Jerry Garcia and company. “Are you ready?” Sam will say first thing, when we get into the truck. Sam injects the CD into the changer, selects the third track on the “Best of The Grateful Dead” album, presses the button, and the music begins. Sometimes I sing the opening—

Truckin’—got my chips cashed in.
Keep truckin’ like the doodah man.
Together, more or less in line . . .

—or I try. Singing is not one of my strong points. Sam proposed a rule that I could only sing after we listened to the song in silence at least twice. So I got the hint.

Then, after “Truckin’,” Sam will select a Rolling Stones CD—we’ve got maybe ten of them, including Flashpoint, Sticky Fingers, and Forty Licks, three favorites, and we listen as we enjoy the scenery and the brightening of the morning. That’s usually our first hour—maybe even two hours, if I am able to get in some narrative insight about the country or stuff in the news to discuss that I have picked up from TV. After the first Stones album from beginning to end, and I really mean “beginning to end,” for Sam refuses to miss a track on any of the Stones we play—and furthermore if a track is interrupted, like for a bathroom break or a phone call, or if I dare to speak while The Mick is crooning, then Sam, the purist, will insist we start the track at the beginning, and listen all over again, and only after every track is consumed will we go on to some other album.

We listen almost exclusively to rock and roll ( Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison and The Doors are regulars), with a little bit of contemporary folk-rock mixed in (Fiona Apple, Jill Sobule, and The Flaming Lips), some pure folk (Simon and Garfunkel and “The Dyl”), Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris, although we are pretty much in agreement that Emmylou is no match for Joan from a quality-of-voice, sincerity-ofspirit standpoint. Emmylou is sweet, but distant. Good writers and good vocalists should be in your face.

After a while, maybe we’re a hundred or so miles and at least one CD into a day, I may try to provide context to the trip or the music. Those first few days heading toward the AlCan, I directed my narration back in time to the Beatniks in the 1950s, and how Jack Kerouac’s On the Road was truly an in-your-face experience—an extravaganza of literature and spontaneity, which inspired generations of nomadic wanderers, capturing the bone and sinew of the country in music and words. How Kerouac triggered an awakening of rebellious spirit—leading eventually to long hair, outrageous clothes, protests against racism and war. How this discontent was embraced by musicians we’ve been listening to, like Dylan, Joplin, even the Dead, whose “Truckin’” was rooted in the Kerouac On the Road message and mystique. I want Sam to see the connecting tissue in the arts—how music and travel can inspire great literature and how literature is in many ways like great music—both are by-products of new and incredible experiences—and how our own odyssey has been inspired by all of these ideas.

My take on cultural history may be skewed because of my prejudiced view of the impact of On the Road—a book that continues to exhilarate me after a dozen readings. I know that all Kerouac wanted to do was to write a great novel and to be recognized for his literary achievements, not unlike Bob Dylan, whose mission was to play classic folk music, recording and understanding elements of our culture and history; neither Kerouac nor Dylan aspired to world-changing motives or visions. But Kerouac is someone I can personally relate to and is a reasonable starting point to explain an age that is entirely foreign to Sam and the remarkable transition that took place in this country, producing an environment and an ethic that turned the country upside down, for good and bad, a condition that the Baby Boomers, me included, are handing over to our children now.

Kerouac wrote On the Road spontaneously, non-stop, in three weeks, on a roll of paper, sheets taped together so as not to interrupt his momentum. He was truckin’, allowing his heart and his intellect to define and propel his quest for literary significance and spiritual relevance. As Dean Moriarty, the crazy, nomadic, sleazy, anti-hero character in the book, says, “You choose your own road in life. ‘What’s your road, man,’ he says, ‘Holybed road, madman road, rainbow road . . . it’s an anywhere road for anybody, anyhow.’” But understand, I told Sam, it took Kerouac four years of thinking and suffering and failing and starting again to clear the way for his three weeks of brilliance. “Understand that brilliance may seem magical—it is magical, in a way—but it is the substance and the end product of a process. Picasso did not begin life with brilliance. The Dyl was a small-time Minnesota kid, who maybe had braces, just like you—dirty fingernails, pimply complexion. He did not begin life with brilliance. He worked toward it, tirelessly, until brilliance seemed to descend upon him.”

Later, taking a break from Harry Potter, Sam and I will read Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, his terrific memoir, and learn about the folk music scene he helped inspire in Greenwich Village in New York a little more than a decade after On the Road. We will also read Phil Lesh’s autobiography—Lesh was the bass guitarist for The Dead and a founder of the group, along with Jerry Garcia—who will introduce Sam to Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and the heady flower child days in San Francisco that turned on and tuned out so many young people. We’ll rent the film Easy Rider and watch Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, cruising on their choppers in the deep south, blown up in the final few minutes of the film and then in the truck discuss (and debate) how they—Hopper and Fonda vs. their redneck killers—represented the lines of division and transformation in this country then and, to some extent, even now.

Truckin’ was a word utilized in many songs, mostly blues, during the Depression era—mostly in the south. “Truckin’ My Blues Away,” by Blind Boy Fuller, was popular in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia in the early 1930s. “Truckin’” or “trucking” is also a dance, introduced at the Cotton Club in New York at about the same time, according to Bessie Jones in her book, Step It Down. Jones says that trucking is a two-step strut: “Step forward with the right foot, bring the left foot up to a close, step in place with the right foot, and rest. Repeat with the opposite feet.” Jones warns readers to refer to trucking as “strutting” when discussing the dance with older folks because the word “truck” was also slang for sexual intercourse. So maybe the “F” word today is the equivalent to the “T” word in the south back then. The irony of intercourse is inescapable, we conclude. As my father had counseled me so many years ago: It’s good to do—and bad to say it.

Truckin' is scheduled to be released from SUNY Press in May 2010.